We’ve had our 2015 Nissan Leaf, a battery-powered, all-electric car, for four months now. As a good student of engineering, I’ve been keeping a running mileage log on our Leaf. (Of course, I’ve been doing this with gasoline-powered cars since I learned to drive oh so many years ago.)

Importantly, we don’t have solar PV and we’re not on any special rate plan. We live a normal middle-class lifestyle, but there’s just the two of us and we don’t have anything fancy like a swimming pool or Jacuzzi.

Our consumption was always around that of the “baseline” for this climate zone. However, fifteen years ago we put in practice the techniques of energy conservation I preach. As a result, we cut our consumption nearly 50%. Until the advent of our EV, our consumption averaged 3,500 kWh per year, or about that of the typical European family and about half that of the typical California residential consumer.

Obviously, plugging in and charging our EV will change that and it did. The results, though, are not disheartening. PG&E’s chart of our consumption for February is shown at right.

As you can see, the days we charged the EV clearly show on the chart. Our kWh consumption rose dramatically from the month’s daily average.

Here’s the EV’s consumption from the mileage log and the kWh meter on our wall-mounted EVSE.

We used nearly 120 kWh in February, costing us about $20. We covered nearly 500 miles from those kWh.

We consumed a total of 287 kWh in February. EV charging accounted for 40% of that. Even with EV charging we were within 10% of the baseline of 6,500 kWh per year.

I checked January as well. In January we were 108%, or about 10%, above the baseline.

It cost us $0.04 per mile to “fuel” the EV.

How does this stack up to a “gasser” as EV drivers call conventional gasoline-powered cars?

I calculated the cost per mile under several conditions: various price per gallon of fuel, and the efficiency of a typical mid-size car and that of a Prius.

At today’s fuel cost of $3 per gallon, the cost of fuel for a mid-size car is about $0.12 per mile and that for the Prius is about $0.06 per mile.

I tell people that the fuel for our EV is about half that of a “typical” car, and less than a Prius.

This is just a fuel cost comparison. It doesn’t take into account the higher capital costs for the traction battery in an EV or the EVSE (charge station) mounted on the wall of our house.

I am satisfied that if our consumption follows the February example, we’ll stay below the electricity consumption of the typical Californian even with the addition of the EV.

Mranlett wrote:I'm very interested in your energy conservation techniques. I've got a new Leaf and I'd love to learn how to offset the increased electricity costs with some conservation based cuts. Thanks!

I don't know if I've written up everything we did--all pretty standard.

Insulation in all walls.Doubled insulation in ceiling.New windows and doors, double-paned with interior shades (it's hot here).New refrigerator--and had the old removed and destroyed.Power strips on all discretionary loads and we turn everything off at the power strip.Laptops and all peripherals on power strips.We use the solar clothes dryer (clothes line).Exterior shades during the summer.Circulating fans80 temp in summer68 temp in winter

We’ve leased a 2015 Nissan Leaf since the fall of 2014. In October 2015 we bought a 2013 Chevy Volt off lease, making our household all electric.

Although the Volt is an extended range electric vehicle (EV)--it also has a gasoline engine--we drive it mostly as an EV.

Since I work with renewable energy, we made a number of energy efficiency improvements in our home in 2001. Until the advent of our EVs, we consistently averaged around 3,200 kWh of electricity consumption per year, including that for air conditioning here in the San Joaquin Valley. Summers are hot here, often around 104°F (40°C) and air conditioning consumes a lot of electricity.

Even with the advent of our Nissan Leaf and now the Chevy Volt, our utility’s conservation report (PG&E) puts us 25%-40% less than similar homes and nearly as good as “efficient similar homes.”

In 2015 our Nissan Leaf consumed 1,030 kWh. In 2016 the Leaf consumed1,085 kWh and the Chevy Volt used 245 kWh in the last quarter. Our EVs contributed about one-quarter of our total consumption of from 5,000-5,500 kWh per year. This is still less than the typical home in the PG&E service area in the San Joaquin Valley.

In the first quarter of 2017, the Leaf consumed 226 kWh and the Volt 200 kWh for about 40% of first quarter total consumption. The cooling doesn’t begin until the second quarter and I expect that the percentage of our consumption attributed to the EVs will decrease once the air conditioning kicks in.

Our annual mileage is about half that of the typical North American as I work at home. If you drive your EV more than we do you can expect to use proportionally more electricity.